German Court and UPC Issue First-Ever Anti-Interim-License Injunctions in SEP Dispute

Earlier this year, the UK Court of Appeal issued a series of decisions holding that a standard essential patent (SEP) licensor must offer an interim license to an accused infringer that applies until a UK court sets the final terms of a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) license—and that the SEP owner will be deemed unwilling if it fails to offer such a license. This prompted a response from Germany’s Munich I Regional Court, which in July issued guidance arguing that the UK approach threatened the jurisdiction of other European courts—and warning that injunctions could result if parties seek interim licenses. That has now occurred: The Munich court has just issued the first-ever “anti-interim-license injunction” (AILI) in response to a request from InterDigital, Inc., barring Amazon from seeking an interim license or a declaration that InterDigital had breached its FRAND obligations by declining to grant one. Soon after, the Mannheim Local Division (Mannheim LD) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a similar, parallel AILI, in the process detailing its own rejection of the UK approach. Both orders were issued on an ex parte basis (without a hearing for the opposing party).

As observed in prior RPX coverage, UK and German courts have taken notably different approaches to FRAND disputes in recent years. In the UK, courts have asserted the power to set the terms of global FRAND licenses (a power first established in the UK Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Unwired Planet v. Huawei) and have awarded conditional injunctions barring implementers from the UK market if they do not accept those terms (so-called FRAND injunctions). In contrast, German courts have taken a more limited view, thus far not wading into the global rate-setting fray and instead enforcing stringent standards for evaluating FRAND compliance by implementers—an approach that, in practice, creates strong incentives for defendants to settle.

Earlier in 2025, the UK Court of Appeal solidified an even more expansive approach to FRAND: In late February, the court held for the second time that a SEP implementer is entitled to an interim license prior to the court’s determination of a final FRAND license, ruling that a willing SEP licensor—here, Ericsson—would grant such a license to defendant Lenovo and finding that the company had breached its obligation to negotiate in good faith by pursuing injunctive relief in other jurisdictions. (The court’s first interim license decision, issued in October 2024 in Panasonic v. Xiaomi, involved parties that had both undertaken to accept the court’s ultimate FRAND ruling, whereas in Lenovo v. Ericsson, only the implementer plaintiff had so undertaken.) The UK High Court then issued its first interim license declaration in late June, finding that a willing licensor in the position of patent owner ZTE would offer defendant Samsung an interim license. ZTE subsequently declined to offer an interim license, as a result of which—similar to the Ericsson v. Lenovo case—the court deemed the company to be an unwilling licensor.

That High Court decision prompted a response from the Munich I Regional Court, where litigation between the same parties is also pending. On July 14, Presiding Judge Oliver Schoen issued guidance (of which an English machine-translated version was filed by ZTE in related US litigation) that in part lays out the court’s views on the propriety of the UK court’s approach.

Among other objections, Judge Schoen took issue with the UK High Court’s June 25 decision in Samsung v. ZTE, countering that “there is no entitlement to the patent owner’s consent to the conclusion of an interim license”. The court grounded that notion in a broader rejection of the UK courts’ approach to jurisdiction, in part appearing to dismiss the notion expressed by the UK High Court that conflicting decisions will result without a global mechanism for resolving FRAND disputes. Judge Schoen argued that no such risk results “if all courts respect national borders” because different treatment of certain facts between different countries is a reflection of “national sovereignty” that courts in other countries must accept.

A “plaintiff cannot unilaterally bind the defendant by bringing proceedings before a national court for the territory outside the country of the court seised”, continued Judge Schoen—further warning that while a defendant may declare its willingness to be bound as to Germany, the court would have to review the “binding effect” of such a declaration if it were claimed to be “made under the influence of the specific procedural situation”.

Judge Schoen also notably stated that injunctive relief could result if a party seeks to enjoin German litigation: “If a party can demonstrate that there is a risk that proceedings will be brought abroad in order to disrupt the proceedings before German courts, action can be taken against this before the Regional Court of Munich I (established AASI case law of the Regional Court of Munich I)”. Observing then that the SEP enforcement system practically allows enforcement actions to be brought in just a few countries, Judge Schoen underscored that “[i]t is therefore unacceptable for defendants to attempt to block the enforcement of injunctive relief by bringing proceedings before the courts of other countries”. That said, Judge Schoen declined to issue an injunction in that case, given that the UK Samsung v. ZTE decision “expressly emphasizes the independence of the courts in other countries” and thus does not amount to an anti-suit injunction, as a result of which no AASI was needed there.

New UK Rate-Setting Case Prompts German and UPC Pushback

The present dispute—i.e., the one that prompted new pushback from the Munich I Regional Court and the UPC—began on August 29, 2025, when Amazon filed a rate-setting action in the UK that also sought declarations of noninfringement, lack of essentiality, and invalidity for the UK parts of four European bundle patents, according to details provided by the Mannheim LD’s September 30 decision. Per the Mannheim LD, Amazon’s particulars of claim (i.e., its main pleadings) in the UK case included a request for an “‘adjustable license’ for the entire portfolio . . . until the conclusion of the rate-setting proceedings” (internal citation omitted). The Mannheim LD also discloses that Amazon filed an action in Sao Paolo, Brazil seeking a declaration of nonessentiality and an anti-suit injunction seeking to bar InterDigital from “asserting patents in other courts in Brazil”.

As recounted by the Munich court, InterDigital’s German AILI request sought to prevent Amazon from seeking a preliminary order requiring InterDigital to grant it an interim license covering patents valid in Germany or from seeking an order that InterDigital “would be in breach of RAND obligations” if it did not grant an interim license, and would order Amazon to withdraw any such actions and to stop litigating such actions to the extent they would affect Germany. The AILI would also bar Amazon from seeking an anti-suit injunction that would prevent infringement proceedings from continuing in Germany or prevent the enforcement of a German court’s subsequent judgments. A violation would result in a fine of €250K, or “administrative detention of up to six months” of an Amazon authorized representative, for “each case of infringement”.

The patent owner’s UPC request, as recounted by the Mannheim LD, requested essentially the same relief but with a broader scope—asking that the requested prohibition on interim license proceedings cover “the applicants’ patents” (without providing a geographic limitation), asking that the withdrawal of such proceedings include the territory covered by the UPC Agreement (i.e., covering all 18 member states), and asking that the bar on an anti-suit injunction cover the UPC. Violations of the order would incur a €250K fine for each day of the violation, though the UPC’s summary does not explicitly mention a request for detention.

The Munich I Regional Court’s Decision

The Munich I Regional Court granted InterDigital’s request on September 26 (reviewed in redacted form, and quoted here, based on an unofficial translation), ruling that InterDigital had presented sufficient prima facie evidence to justify an injunction. In particular, it held that Amazon’s request for a UK order requiring InterDigital to grant an interim license “constitutes an infringement of the property-like legal position of the patent holders” because those orders would “prevent the applicants from fully and successfully asserting the rights arising from the patents before German courts for a not inconsiderable period of time”.

That reasoning “applies equally” to Amazon’s request for a declaration that InterDigital would be in breach of its FRAND obligation without granting an interim license, the court continued—holding that this would only “give the applicants the illusion of freedom to grant a corresponding interim license”, such that InterDigital would thereby be “deprived” of the right to assert its UK patents and would be “effectively faced with the choice of whether to accept a restriction of their rights under German patents or UK patents”.

The court acknowledged that Amazon’s relevant claims for relief referred only to UK patents. However, the court nonetheless found that “based on the overall circumstances . . . there is an imminent threat of these applications being extended to the applicants' global patent portfolio”, including German patents. The relevant circumstances, per the court, include the fact that Amazon made certain references to the global InterDigital portfolio in its particulars of claim; and that in other proceedings UK courts have ordered interim licenses, observing that “[t]here is no indication that the UK courts have since departed from this practice”.

The court then concluded with a warning that it “reserves the right to regard a party” as an unwilling licensee if it seeks “an interim license and/or a declaration of infringement of (F)RAND obligations in the event of non-granting of an interim license on the terms and conditions set by a foreign court”, if those requests encompass patents covering Germany.

In a subsequent clarifying order, the court explained that the prohibition on seeking an interim license, and on seeking a declaration of FRAND noncompliance if one was sought, were both to apply to the extent that such measures “prevent[] and/or is intended to prevent the applicants from bringing or continuing patent infringement proceedings before national courts in the Federal Republic of Germany and/or from enforcing any resulting judgments or measures” thereof.

The Mannheim LD’s Decision

The UPC’s Mannheim LD granted InterDigital’s request for an AILI—here, styled as an application for provisional measures—on September 30. The court began by holding that it has jurisdiction, both because the areas where InterDigital’s patent rights would allegedly be encroached upon fall within UPC territories, and because potential anti-suit injunctions would prevent InterDigital from asserting its patent rights within those territories (thus also establishing ancillary jurisdiction).

The Mannheim LD then proceeded to hold that the application was well-founded, starting by ruling that InterDigital was entitled to ask the UPC for the requested injunctive relief under EU law—which it found, in part, to provide that the “procedural enforceability of intellectual property rights is a central aspect of” the rights inherent to a patent, and to provide that such relief falls under the EU guarantee, for those with rights or freedoms falling under the EU Charter, of access to court proceedings and a final decision. The court also found that from a substantive perspective InterDigital is likely to prevail, both as the party with the apparent right to enforce its patents and due to the likelihood of “a serious threat of infringement of [its] patent rights”.

The Mannheim LD additionally found that under the aforementioned UK SEP caselaw, the issuance of a declaratory judgment in the UK would “effectively result in a party submitting solely to the courts of the United Kingdom”. The court found that the “stated purpose” of caselaw designed to encourage patent owners to grant an interim license by “effectively pointing out the negative consequences they would otherwise face before the UK courts” (i.e., a declaration of unwillingness) is to “deter the SEP proprietor from initiating or continuing any other parallel pending litigation that also concerns SEPs, at least to some extent”.

Next, the court proceeded to recount relevant aspects of those rulings, noting in part how the UK Court of Appeal rejected stated concerns by the High Court (i.e., the lower court) that granting an interim license, rather than an anti-suit injunction, was akin to “jurisdictional imperialism”. The Mannheim LD also noted the Court of Appeal’s shifting posture toward the necessity of the parties’ respective undertakings to accept the court’s FRAND judgment: how it noted in Panasonic v. Xiaomi (its first interim license ruling, as noted above) that both had so undertaken, whereas in Lenovo v. Ericsson the patent owner had not done so.

Additionally, the Mannheim LD points out that in subsequent decisions like Samsung v. ZTE, the Court of Appeal had expressed the view that rather than amounting to jurisdictional imperialism, the global rate-setting power from Unwired Planet and the practice of setting interim licenses are motivated by a “desire” to promote efficient FRAND dispute resolution, and are “designed to put an end to wasteful, essentially duplicative litigation in many countries, when there is really only one dispute: the terms of a global FRAND licence”. The Mannheim LD further observed that the Court of Appeal, in Samsung v. ZTE, also framed its approach as promoting comity by “reliev[ing] the courts and tribunals of Brazil, Germany, the UPC, and Hangzhou of a great deal of burdensome and wasteful litigation commenced by [licensor] ZTE, but also the retaliatory litigation in those jurisdictions plus the USA commenced by Samsung”.

The Mannheim LD next turned to the merits of InterDigital’s injunction request, apparently finding (in a section that has been partially redacted) that there is an imminent “risk of first infringement” due to the likelihood of an application for a declaration of entitlement to an interim license in the UK and due to the ASI in the Brazilian case. The court found that the “urgency” requirement was met because an interim license declaration could be issued within a “short period of time”, because InterDigital had not delayed in seeking an AILI.

Urgency was also established, per the Mannheim LD, because of the manner in which the UK interim license caselaw discussed above impacts the relative interests of the parties: The court explains that this caselaw, by threatening a judgment of FRAND noncompliance and pressuring the parties to litigate FRAND disputes before UK courts, amounts to a “de facto prohibition on litigation” elsewhere—rejecting the given justification, that this would “save other courts around the world a lot of unnecessary work”, as “not tenable”.

Moreover, the Mannheim LD distinguished the present case as potentially involving a more stringent remedy: While the prior cases merely involved the issuance of a declaration that the patent owner must offer an interim license, here the court found that there is also the “threat of a ruling based on the continental European concept of specific performance”, an order of which would be “directly enforceable in the UK by means of fines and coercive detention”. Given that the UPC is bound to apply that EU law, the court held that “such an encroachment is unacceptable”, an encroachment both impacting patent owners and “the judicial sovereignty of other states”.

Furthermore, given that the UPC is also required to apply EU antitrust law, the Mannheim LD held that additional problems could result from the interim license declaration sought in the UK, because such a declaration “may result in the SEP proprietor being de facto forced to accept an offer (at least for the time being) that is at the lower end of the FRAND corridor or, depending on the amount of the implementer's offer, even outside it”. If another (non-UK) court were prevented from reviewing that license under EU antitrust law, “this could result in courts not bound by EU law making determinations on (F)RAND licenses that cannot be legally upheld in the European single market and may even be contrary to public policy”.

That would particularly be the case, the Mannheim LD continued, if the interim license is not determined by a review of the FRAND compliance of competing offers, but instead using the “midpoint” approach (i.e., taking the midpoint between the parties’ offers) followed by UK courts thus far, which could result in a license that “fall[s] outside the corridor of EU law”. Not only would that license then provide a starting point for further negotiations that is unmoored from EU law, the court observed, this practice could also encourage parties to take less rational negotiating positions—to make “more difficult-to-bridge maximum demands in order to have the most favorable starting point possible for further negotiations when overcoming their difference”.

The Mannheim LD then concluded, in part, by underscoring its prior rejection of the UK court’s invocation of cost- and time-saving in support of its approach: “It is solely up to the parties to decide what costs they wish to incur in conducting litigation, and it is the task of the courts of the European Union to decide on the cases brought before them. The initiation of such proceedings, which serve to enforce patent rights before the UPC, must not be prevented by outside judicial intervention”. An AILI, which the court underscored is merely defensive in nature, “is intended to shield the proceedings before the UPC”, leaving the UK court free to issue a decision on FRAND rates and the effect within its territory should a party fail to comply. Competing, parallel FRAND determinations in other jurisdictions, the court emphasized, “must be accepted as a decision of the litigating parties”, while no court may make “economic considerations” in the parties’ best interests without their “mutual consent”.

Stay tuned for RPX’s upcoming review of the third quarter for more on recent FRAND developments. More on the interim license issue, and another jurisdictional SEP battle between the European Commission and China, can also be found at “Top SEP Venues Spar over Anti-Suit Injunctions and Jurisdiction” (July 2025).